Reclaiming History Review PDF

BOOK REVIEWS / Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History
Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi:

A Not-Entirely-Positive Review
David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.

Memorial Day 2007
Revised 12 June 2007
It is surely interesting how intelligent people can differ

in looking at the same evidence …
——“Doggedness and the Talpiot Tomb,” James Tabor, 22 May 20071
Biographical Details
Vincent Boo-liosi (no “g” sound)2 was born on 18 August 1934. According to one
web site, he is the third most famous person from Hibbing, Minnesota.3 After
moving to California, he graduated from Hollywood High School.
Bugliosi (simply designated as “B” hereafter) graduated from of the University of

Miami in Coral Cables, Florida (BA, 1956). Eight years later he received his law
degree from UCLA (1964), where he was president of his graduating class. As a
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney, he successfully prosecuted
Charles Manson and several other members of Manson’s “family” for the 1969
murders of Sharon Tate and six others. He lost only one of the 106 felony cases
he tried as a prosecutor, which included winning 21 out of 21 murder cases. He
later wrote a book about the Manson trial called Helter Skelter. B has been out-
spoken in the media about the incompetence and/or malfeasance of lawyers
and judges in major trials. He wrote a bestselling book, Outrage, on the acquit-
tal of O. J. Simpson, in which he detailed the work of the district attorney,
prosecutors, the defense lawyers, and presiding judge and illustrated what he
saw as broader problems in American criminal justice, the media, and the po-
litical appointment of judges. He also condemned the Supreme Court’s deci-
sions in Jones vs. Clinton and in the 2000 presidential election. He wrote a
lengthy criticism of the decision in an article for The Nation titled “None Dare
Call It Treason”, which was later expanded into a book titled The Betrayal of
1 The Jesus Dynasty Blog.

2 Endnotes, p. 7; this is how he pronounces his name. (Citations from the main text are
identified herein by a naked page number.)
3 Hibbing, population 17,000, Minnesota’s largest city (by area), lies about 50 miles
north and 35 miles west of Duluth (Jim Fetzer’s former turf) and is famous for its Bob
Dylan memorabilia and the world’s largest open pit iron mine. According to this web
site for Hibbing, its second most famous character is Kevin McHale, former teammate of
Larry Bird with the 1980s Boston Celtics and regular opponent of Magic Johnson and
the Lakers in the NBA finals. Hibbing is also close to the crash site of Senator
Wellstone’s plane.
ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

David W. Mantik 2 Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History
America. Some of his criticisms are portrayed in the 2004 documentary Orwell
Rolls in his Grave.
B is also an expert on the JFK and RFK assassinations. His book, Reclaiming
History: The Assassination of President John F Kennedy, was released in May
2007. That book is the subject of this review. It contains 1612 numbered pages,
an introduction (xlvii pages), plus a CD of Endnotes (958 pages) and Source
Notes (170 pages); it is literally bursting with second-hand information. Its total
page count would appear to be about 2786, almost exactly three times as long
as the 888-page Warren Report.
B is of Italian ancestry, married, and has two children, Wendy and Vince Jr.
Like many characters in JFK assassination research today, he is an agnostic (in
matters of religion, but not regarding the assassination) although he is open to
the ideas of deism (but not to those of conspiracy).4
Though I have not read Helter Skelter (the subject bored me) my wife loved it,
while I thoroughly enjoyed And the Sea Will Tell (also a 1991 TV movie with
Richard Crenna), which B kindly autographed for my nurse. I have also been a
great fan of Outrage and his critique of the Supreme Court for putting us in the
Bush leagues. (Everyone knows that our current Bush is a former major league
baseball owner.)
A Personal Encounter
On a lovely Sunday morning, I knocked on the front door of B’s corner house, a
modest, but charming affair, located very near the Arroyo Seco, home to the
Rose Bowl. Because he had written to me about my work, I was curious to meet
him in the flesh. While en route to see my son at Occidental College, I decided
that the time had come to pay him a personal, albeit unannounced, visit. The
door was quickly answered by B. After an initial puzzled expression, he imme-
diately waved me in, with all the old country charm one would expect from a
fellow Midwesterner. He was warm, courtly, and gracious, quite unlike his writ-
ing. After this encounter I understood why he had been president of his law
school class. Following introductions to his wife, we sat together with drinks at
the kitchen table, a la Nixon and Khrushchev (24 July 1959). The conversation
was congenial though not substantive. I was able to ascertain that he had in-
deed received the requested information from me. Most especially he had
“Twenty Conclusions after Nine Visits”,5 a summary of my work at the National
Archives.
4 The preceding paragraphs were adapted from the Wikipedia. No hobbies are listed. For
an excellent photo of Bugliosi see http://www.nndb.com/people/807/000023738/
5 To my surprise, I just discovered that a Google search of this title promptly displays
my paper, which was presented at the 2003 Pittsburgh Symposium.

An Immediate Disaster for B
According to Max Holland,6 B’s stamina for setting the record straight (on the
assassination) is unequalled and will probably never be surpassed. After all,
who else would be heroic enough—some would say foolhardy enough—to give
birth to a book that weighs nearly as much as a newborn? It is likely that this
book will stand forever as the magnum opus of this case—though not without
serious flaws. Holland implies that its length makes it especially vulnerable to
factual errors. I would liken the book to a house held aloft by a multitude of
stilts. The more such posts are required, the more likely it is that one of them
will fail. Unfortunately for B, that has already happened. I refer, of course, to
the neutron activation analysis (NAA) work, which was strongly supported by B
in his book. See Dr. Gary Aguilar’s transparent and extremely well-written
summary of this subject.7 Aguilar cites the very latest on this subject, including
a statistical paper just published in the Annals of Applied Statistics by former
FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A & M University researchers
Cliff Spiegelman, William D. James and colleagues. The first major salvo across
the deck had been fired not long before by Patrick M. Grant, Ph.D. and Erich
Randich, Ph.D. in the Journal of Forensic Science. I had the great pleasure of
hearing Grant and Randich present their findings to a small group in San Fran-
cisco last summer at a Saturday seminar arranged by Dr. Aguilar. Their find-
ings left no doubt that Robert Blakey’s so-called scientific “linch pin” of the as-
sassination had totally exploded in his face.8 If any doubt remained after Grant
and Randich, this latest paper has inexorably vaporized that scintilla. Sturdivan
and Rahn (B’s favorites) can massage and squeeze Guinn’s original data all they
want, using one statistical test after anther, but nothing can save them. It’s a
simple matter of garbage in, garbage out. Guinn’s data are the problem—they
are simply inadequate to the task, as has now been demonstrated twice over, by
well respected, even-handed scientists. The problem now for B, of course, is
that when one supporting pillar has been so thoroughly—and immediately—
demolished, one can only wonder what other pillars are already infested with
termites. Another not-so-minor point is this: After all is said and done,
everyone now knows, totally contrary to B’s repeated expostulations,

that he is sometimes wrong—even if he won’t admit it!
6 I have paraphrased Holland’s review from The Wall Street Journal, 19–20 May 2007,
P8. See my own negative comments about the very bright, but misguided, Max Holland
in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), pp. 399–400. (I will hereafter abbreviate this book as
“MIDP”.)
7 Just Google: “Is Vincent Bugliosi Right that Neutron Activation Analysis Proves
Oswald’s Guilt?” or see the web site: www.reclaiminghistory.org.

8 My own background in physics (I had taught a course on nuclear physics to seniors at
the University of Michigan) quickly led me to suspect this data when I first reviewed it
at the UCSD library, very early in my JFK research and before I had drawn any final
conclusions about conspiracy. My response to this data was simple and prompt: if this
was the best that modern science could do for the lone gunman case, I suspected that
the rest of the case could hardly be stronger.

The problem, as we shall amply soon see, is that he wears permanent blinders,
particularly when it comes to experts, and especially so for those from science.
How Can the Truth Be Known?
In 1959, C. P. Snow, a physicist and a literary man, gave his brilliant Rede Lec-
ture, which was then published as The Two Cultures (a Second Look was added
in 1963). His message was straightforward: a huge, unbridgeable chasm had
grown between the scientists and the literati, so much so that neither under-
stood the most basic knowledge of the other. The scientists did not know their
Shakespeare and the literati could not even define mass or acceleration, let
alone the second law of thermodynamics. Occupying both of these worlds at
once, days in physics and evenings in literature (with famous individuals),
Snow was acutely aware of this chasm. Lawyers would not usually be classified
with the literati,9 but Snow did raise the possibility of a third culture (or even
more). The point remains—the gap between different specialties in the modern
world is still wide, perhaps wider than ever, as Alan Sokal has proven.10
As I see it, the fundamental difference between scientists and lawyers lies in
epistemology—i.e., how does one define, or even find, truth?11 For lawyers,
9 p. xlv. B states, “I don’t read fiction but I’ve been told … [more second-hand informa-
tion].” By definition, then, he does not read Shakespeare, poetry or great novels, not
even James Joyce. Some wags, to help him safely avoid fiction, would advise him also to
steer clear of the Bible [see The Bible Unearthed (2000) by Israel Finkelstein and Neil
Silberman] or even the WC volumes (B’s book, p. 860; see comments by Dr. Cyril
Wecht).
10 Alan Sokal, a physicist, raised these old specters with his “Transgressing the
Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” The original

article, a parody, was published in Social Text 46/47, pp. 217–252 (Spring/Summer
1996). The paper was a thoroughgoing, tongue-in-cheek hoax of the Post-Modernists,
hilarious in many places, though the humor was quite lost on the humanities crowd,
which was why it got published. In a follow-up paper, declined (!) by Social Text, he
stated, “One of my goals is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the Left
between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” which, contrary to some
optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group), are probably farther apart in
mentality than at any time in the past 50 years.” Also see Fashionable Nonsense:
Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. For me
(DWM), this issue was strongly reintroduced to my consciousness this past year when
my 21 year old son at college began forced consumption of the Post-Modernists, French
linguistic philosophers, and James Joyce. I was thrilled to introduce him to Sokal’s
work. He, in turn, enlightened me about Joyce. I then spent many long hours listening
to Joyce on tape. This may be a family thing for us, but my 19 year old daughter has
just left Dublin after touring the sites from Bloomsday (Ulysses). She assured me that
she was keenly aware of the allusion to Bloom in the Broadway musical, The Producers.
11 Jim Fetzer (e-mail to me) has suggested the following. “Epistemology, as the theory of
knowledge, does encompass differences among different kinds of proof, which I discuss
in ‘Assassination Science and the Language of Proof’, in Assassination Science. There
are important differences between the law (resolving conflicts in a limited interval of
time based upon such evidence as is available, relevant, and legally admissible) versus
science (discovering truths over an open interval of time where new evidence and new

steeped in the adversarial system, the answer is clear-cut: use expert witnesses,
and then let a jury vote. For a scientist, the very notion of a debate, and then a
vote on truth, would be absurd, simply laughed out of court in a nanosecond.
Instead, the scientist would set up a controlled experiment, perform multiple
measurements, and then publish his results in a peer reviewed journal. But for
his work to be accepted as part of the scientific corpus, it would likely be re-
peated several times over by independent groups. So, how can these two ap-
proaches be reconciled? In fact, they can’t. It is surely encouraging, though,
that the legal profession has taken seriously the question of who can qualify as
an expert.12 This has been a useful improvement in the adversarial process,
though we are not likely at the end of that road. In summary, we remain stuck
today with these two widely different approaches to truth. Insofar as B goes, it
is surely germane to note here his own confession: he avoided high school phys-
ics.13 In the context of his discussion with his namesake, Dr. Vincent Guinn
(about JFK’s head snap),14 it would appear that B never took any physics any-
where. If he had, this would have been the time and place to say so. On the
contrary, silence is all we hear.
A Few Kind Words for B
B’s book represents a massive, even prodigious, outpouring of work. One must
be either mad or a genius to wallow for 20 years in such an interminable pro-
ject. B appears to be a wonderful admixture of both. His writing style is gener-
ally lucid. Although I often found his logic jolting, the book was fairly easy to
read. I often grumble about authors’ avoidable ambiguities, but B, for the most
part, sidesteps these. Also, to his credit, I was able quickly to learn more about
several details of the case that I had not previously had time to pursue. A long
time ago, I tried Conspiracy of One; I don’t think I ever finished it because it
seemed so ludicrous. Posner was another matter. His book is the only one,
about any subject, that I have ever stopped reading because honesty did not
seem his strong suit. B’s book is totally unlike either. In its own way, it is a
hypotheses may require rejecting hypotheses previously accepted, and accepting hy-
potheses previously rejected). My Philosophy of Science discussed alternative models of
science and explains why among them—abductivism—is the most defensible.”
12 “Legal Perceptions of Science and Expert Knowledge,” Psychology, Public Policy, and
Law (2002) 8(2) 139–153 by Joseph Sanders, Shari Diamond and Neil Vidmar. This pa-
per reviews expert witness standards from Frye to Kumho Tire—including Daubert, of
course. The casual reader will see that a uniformly accepted definition of science is not
easily obtainable. Even worse, we don’t even know whether judges are better than juries
at making correct decisions about expert witnesses! It also remains to be seen whether
the Daubert test is completely up to the job.
13 p. 488.
14 p. 488. Here I agree with B’s cited physicist, Art Hoffman from UCLA, on JFK’s head
movement: a bullet would produce only slight motion of the head in the direction of the
bullet, whether fired from front or back. In this I profoundly disagree with the early crit-
ics, who proclaimed the head snap to be the ultimate proof of a frontal headshot. (Of
course, B portrays all of those opposed to him—presumably me, too—as believing this
nonsense.) In fact, the head snap is instead telling us something quite different and
quite powerful, but this is not the place for that discussion.

masterpiece—a truly brilliant prosecutorial brief. In the end, though, the ques-
tion is whether that is what we want—or need—at this stage of the case.
And Some That Aren’t So Kind
B’s style is relentless, inexorable, invincible (a pale pun), and ultimately brutal.
Scarcely anyone—friend or foe—comes off well. Nearly all, possibly except for
the Warren Commission (WC),15 emerge smelling like sewer rats. Although he
defends his right to attack wrong-headed ideas (who would argue?) he never
quite explains why it is necessary to fire off one ad hominem salvo after an-
other.16 Regarding such attacks, Snow himself was blindsided by his share. His
response was as follows:
It seems to me that engaging in immediate debate on each specific point closes

one’s own mind for good and all. Debating gives most of us much more psycho-
logical satisfaction than thinking does: but it deprives us of whatever chance
there is of getting closer to the truth. It seems preferable to me to sit back and
let what has been said sink in …17
B’s approach reminded me of a bulldozer in a garbage pile. Never mind any-

thing, just plow straight ahead, crunching whatever lies below and ahead, and
clear a path to the other side. At this, he is unsurpassed. After he is done, the
road is indeed clear, but who would want to follow such a path? As Max Hol-
land insightfully stated, “He is absolutely certain even when he is not necessar-
ily right.” I found that comment a little scary—as most scientific types would. In
addition, on a personal level, I found his unrelenting attacks (on just about eve-
ryone) quite vexing and distracting, even uncivil, a quality that B in person
clearly does not display. I had considered compiling an astonishing list of pejo-
ratives simply for effect, but the reader will find them easily enough. No scien-
tific treatise would permit a single one of these.
Chief among these is the phrase “conspiracy theorist”, which seems to assault
one’s eyes from almost every page.18 (Someone should count them all.) B tries to
defend his incessant use of this phrase,19 though this discussion comes aston-
ishingly late in the book and only as a footnote. He specifically indicates that he
uses “WC critic” and conspiracy theorist” somewhat interchangeably, not be-
cause they are linguistically so, he says, but because they essentially are (inter-
changeable). Given his maniacal devotion to this phrase, an explication within
the first few pages of his book would have been wise. B admits that it is possible
to be a WC critic without being a conspiracy theorist, but he insists that be-
cause most critics (almost inevitably, in my view) have some non-WC notion of
historical events in this case he is therefore permitted to paint them as theo-
rists. One wonders, in particular, how kindly Harold Weisberg would have taken
15 p. xxxiv.
16 Regarding ad hominem attacks see my footnote 10, MIDP, p. 406.
17 C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and a Second Look (1988 edition), p. 56.
18 Regarding such attacks, see MIDP, p. 374.
19 p. 998, footnote.

to such logic and to such a pejorative, particularly in view of B’s direct quote
from Weisberg about what his (Weisberg’s) position was.20 Furthermore, B’s fa-
vorite phrase is used in a totally one-sided fashion: a computer search through
the entire book yielded not a single use of the corresponding phrase “lone gun-
man theorist.” In no other way does B so clearly display his hostile—even scorn-
ful—attitude toward the critics. (Though the word ultimately does not fit,
“screed” often popped into my head as I read.) Those on B’s side are dignified by
“assassinologist” or “researcher” or “student of the assassination”, but never as
theorists. Only those opposed to him can qualify as theorists. To a physicist,
this is a particularly anomalous—even bizarre—use of the word. In general,
physicists are divided between theorists and experimentalists. As C. P. Snow
notes, the former generally talk only to themselves and to God. I don’t think
that such sublime conversation is what B had in mind though.
Some Misgivings about B’s Thinking
B dispenses a few rare, kind words about our three books (edited by James Fet-
zer) as “… perhaps the only exclusively scientific books (three) on the assassina-
tion.”21 However, nowhere in these three books, or elsewhere in my writing,
have I personally indicated who did it. This matters not a whit. I, too, have now
been spray painted with this phrase. On the contrary, in these three books my
chief goal had been to collect data, including hundreds of measured points on
the JFK autopsy X-rays. If B absolutely must describe me with his C-word, per-
haps he might creatively have called me a “conspiracy experimentalist”. Instead,
we are all indiscriminately lumped together as “conspiracy theorists”. Unlike
Old Abe, he is a lumper, not a splitter. I truly doubt that he explored each per-
son’s history to determine whether they truly had an overall theory of the as-
sassination—or even to what degree; he clearly did not do that for Weisberg. It
was obviously more important for him to paint one and all with the same broad
strokes of his prosecutor’s brush. This, too, reeks more of the courtroom than
of the laboratory.
Is This Book Scientific?
If one is looking for a scientific treatise on the JFK assassination, Reclaiming

History is not the place to look. To cite the NAA work again as an example par
excellence, B disposes of Grant and Randich’s work chiefly by the simple expe-
dient of quoting a long letter from Sturdivan. To a T, this exemplifies the law-
yer’s reflexive approach to evidence: introduce your expert witness, and then let
the matter rest. B truly has neither the time nor space to address these issues
in the detail that they require, though it is unfortunate that Aguilar’s short
piece came too late to publish side by side with Sturdivan’s. That would have
balanced the ledger a good bit.
20pp. xli–xlii. Weisberg had said he could not link Oswald to any agency.
21p. 974. Our three books are Assassination Science, Murder in Dealey Plaza, and The
Great Zapruder Film Hoax.

So where does that leave B vis-à-vis the science in his book? For a layman he
has struggled heroically first to understand and then to explain matters for his
readers. And he has done this as well as could be expected of any layman.
Though B will feel quite nauseous at reading this, he has already been preceded
by two who have shown how well the medical evidence in particular can be
mastered by laymen—Douglas Horne and Jeremy Gunn, of the Assassination
Records Review Board (AARB). No one before them in any governmental situa-
tion had shown such a command of this evidence. Though he would never deign
to shake their hands, B has also now been promoted to this group of well-
informed laymen. As would be expected, he sometimes misuses medical terms
(and even misunderstands what I know), but overall he communicates these is-
sues well, though we often disagree profoundly on interpretation. Whenever
possible, though, he prefers simply to quote the experts who side with him, es-
pecially those from the WC and House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA). Of course, that’s precisely what we should expect: lawyers are paid for
presenting the experts, not for presenting the evidence. B rarely shows much
originality or personal ability to analyze the medical or scientific data. In es-
sence, he operates with a crutch virtually all of the time—without these experts
at his side he is a near cripple. As for me, coming from a scientific background,
and being thoroughly familiar with virtually all of this JFK (medical and scien-
tific) evidence, I found B’s myopic and closed-minded view of this critical data
acutely disappointing. How can one dialogue with a lawyer who hides behind
his chosen experts? Somehow, from such a brilliant mind, I had hoped for
more. It was, of course, unreasonable of me. The gap between the different cul-
tures is simply too large.
He also seems not to understand the nature of scientific argument or proof. A

good example of this is the so-called upward bullet trail through JFK’s neck
(which cannot be true as he describes it). To his credit, he honestly implies that
it took about an hour for him to grasp this concept, but finally, by use of his
hand and finger, he got it. In physics, as a first step to a new concept, physi-
cists often resort to what they call “hand-waving” arguments. Quite ironically in
this case, B, in every sense of the word, has resorted to just such a finger-
waving process—but as a proof, not just as a first step!22 And that is where he
leaves it. Of course, no scientist would do that. On the contrary, a scientist
would describe this first step as a heuristic approach, only useful to start in the
right direction. Instead, he would estimate the upward angle through JFK’s
neck, then estimate the thickness of JFK’s neck, locate the entry and exit levels
(in the vertical direction), add a range of error for each of these and then finally
calculate whether the numbers made any quantitative sense. Until then our
model scientist would proclaim gross ignorance about his conclusion. Not so for
B—a qualitative answer is the end of his science. Again, really though, what
more should we have expected? This is, after all, the courtroom.
22 pp. 421–422.

What About That 60-Second Proof?
And what about B’s self-described and marvelous one-minute proof before the
crowd of 600 trial lawyers?23 Did he really make his case that the attorneys
were being irrational to have an opinion on the JFK case—merely because they
had not read the entire Warren Report? Suppose instead that he had asked how
many believed in the atomic theory of matter? Would he likewise have de-
manded the reading of Einstein’s seminal 1905 paper on Brownian motion? Or
what if he had asked whether they believed that FDR had deliberately permitted
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? If anyone believed either side of this
question, would he still have insisted that they must have read all nine official
investigations of this controversy before coming to a decision? And if one is re-
quired to read the Warren Report before having an opinion, why stop there?
Why not also insist on reading at least the initial volume of the HSCA? Where
does this end? If he weren’t so unbalanced, B might also have suggested that
the trial lawyers read the report of the Church Committee. In fact, both the
HSCA and the Church Committee found the WC in serious error on significant
points.24 In his pioneering work on this question of second-hand information,25
Patrick Wilson of Berkeley emphasized a universal truth: anyone’s own knowl-
edge of the world, beyond his immediate life, is only what others have told
him—either personally or via the varieties of the media. In fact, the vast major-
ity of our strongly held beliefs are of that nature.26 No one has the time or inter-
est to check all of this out. In fact, only the tiniest percentage of our second-
hand knowledge is ever cross checked. I wonder why no one among all of those
600 trial lawyers—surely not a bashful group—had the courage to challenge B
on this fundamental issue. But I think I know—B was the authority figure, and
if trial lawyers have learned one thing it is to recognize such figures, and then
genuflect as needed.
Shakespeare (revised) on Lawyers
One commodity was in generous supply for the WC and for the HSCA—lawyers.
Lawyers organized the agenda—just look at the Table of Contents for the War-
ren Report.27 Lawyers guided the research and they wrote the conclusions. Sci-
23 p. xxiv.
24 “How Five Investigations into JFK’s Medical/Autopsy Evidence Got It Wrong,” by Gary
L. Aguilar and Kathy Cunningham (May 2003). To find this article, the reader can sim-
ply enter this title via Google.
25 Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority (1983). Also see How
the Mind Works (1997) and The Blank Slate (2002) by Steven Pinker.
26 For example, Pinker notes that 25% of Americans believe in witches, 50% in ghosts,
50% in the devil, 50% believe that the book of Genesis is literally true, 69% believe in
angels, 87% believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and 96% believe in a god or universal
spirit. This is taken from Pinker’s talk, “The Evolutionary Psychology of Religion”, pre-
sented at the annual meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Madison, Wis-
consin, 29 October 2004, on receipt of the “Emperor’s New Clothes Award”.
27 pp. xxx–xxxi. B admits that the WC perhaps should have considered conspiracy more
than it did. For example, one very long, but omitted document (June 1964) was titled:

ence, when present at all, played only a consultative role (just like the adversar-
ial system with its expert witnesses). But there is an alternate model. For a later
official, presidential investigation (the Challenger disaster), Nobel Laureate and
physicist Richard Feynman escaped from the lawyer’s zoo. Almost single-
handedly, and with single-minded zeal—a contemporary Sherlock Holmes—he
pursued the evidence until that magical denouement on television. With the
world watching, he showed how the O-ring would not deform normally after
simply being dunked into a glass of ice water.28 Even after all of this, though,
his personal written report was not welcome in the final publication—the law-
yers still had their own agenda. Feynman even had to send a telegram to the
lawyers in which he threatened to remove his signature from their final report
unless his personal report appeared “… without modification from version
#23.”29 In view of C. P. Snow’s literary interests, perhaps Shakespeare deserves
his only brief, candle-lit appearance on my stage:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in our lawyers, that we are underlings.30
At Last, to the Evidence
At my suggestion, Jim Fetzer wrote to B (23 January 2001): “What would it take
to convince you of a conspiracy and cover-up in the death of JFK?” And also,
“Are none of our major discoveries—our ‘16 smoking guns’, for example—
convincing? And, if not, why? And, if not, what would it take?” B’s answer was
simple: “Only evidence, Drs. Fetzer and Mantik. Only evidence.”31
Given those booming, opening sentences to this entire section of his book, I
naturally had anticipated that B would, at last, address all of our issues in
great detail. Was I wrong! Despite these cheery, introductory accolades, it was
mostly evasion—authentic discussion of our paradoxes was, by and large, quite
off limits. There was a lot of palaver about many other things but little at all
about the central 16—or my 20 Conclusions. In one footnote there was more
discussion about JFK’s clothing (which I have seen more than once at the Ar-
chives), and who had supplied it, than nearly any single one of our challenges
to him. There are even 16 pages of desultory discussion of Oswald’s motive.
B’s chief claim for his book appears to be this quote:
“Oswald’s Foreign Activities: Summary of Evidence Which Might Be Said to Show That
There Was Foreign Involvement in the Assassination of President Kennedy”. So even if
one read the Warren Report, he would not learn this.
28 p. 1443. Although B mentions the Challenger, he does not credit Feynman.
29 What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1998), Richard P. Feynman.
30 This is an irreverent adaptation from Julius Caesar, I, ii, 134.
31 p. 974. Fetzer was here referring to MIDP, pp. 1–14. These smoking guns included
several medical conundrums, some of which I had raised as issues new to the case.

… although there have been hundreds of books on the assassination, no book

has even attempted to be a comprehensive and fair evaluation of the entire [sic]
case, including all of the major conspiracy theories.32
Although he does not explicitly say that his book meets this description, it is
very hard to avoid the implication that that is exactly what he means. And, if
not in fact, that is surely the book he wanted to write. This is an overweening
claim. In fact, his fellow WC true believer, Max Holland, states: “Some might re-
gard this as a foolish errand because there is no end to it, a fact that B readily
acknowledges.”33 I would have been much more sympathetic had he tried to
cover even most of the medical and scientific evidence—even while leaving aside
most of the conspiracy theories. In the process of sifting and winnowing his
subject matter, rather large mountains in the medical and scientific arena were
left unvisited. Surprisingly, among these lie most of the “Twenty Conclusions in
Nine Visits”, cited above. This was one particular item that B had requested of
me and which had been supplied to him. He does cite it—but we don’t get much
further than that.
I turn next to those issues largely left as terra incognita by B. In view of his per-
sonal lack of scientific expertise, it was probably wise for him not to venture
into these foreign lands. I was more than astonished though that he did not
even acknowledge that these paradoxes remained mostly off his map—after all,
he did promise from the beginning that he would be honest and thorough.
Central Paradoxes Studiously (and Wisely) Evaded by B
(Note: Many pertinent images for the discussion below are at the website for my
Pittsburgh lecture. Just Google: Twenty Conclusions after Nine Visits.)
“…the Commission’s fiercest critics have not been able to produce any new
credible evidence that would in any way justify a different conclusion.”34
“One advantage of being a conspiracy theorist is that you don’t need any evi-
dence to support your charge.”35
“… with the allegation of planted evidence, the other main conspiracy argu-
ment … is that much of the evidence against Oswald was forged or tampered
with by authorities. But not once have theorists ever proved this allegation.”36
“I will not knowingly omit or distort anything.”37
1. The huge clash between the lateral X-rays and the brain photographs per-
sists. Although I should not expect B to deal with optical densities, this
32 p. xiv.
33 Wall Street Journal, 19–20 May 2007, P8.
34 p. xli.
35 p. 1041.
36 p. 984.
37 p. xxxix.

matter can be addressed at a layman’s level, via the obvious blackness at

the front of the lateral X-rays. A fist-sized area shows virtually no brain at
all. Although the OD measurements confirm this, simple visual inspection
clearly supports the same conclusion. Besides the empty bilateral frontal
area, though, a great deal of brain tissue is obviously missing on the supe-
rior right side as well. The brain photographs, on the other hand, show a
nearly intact brain on both sides. Therefore: either the X-rays are wrong or
the photographs are of some other brain.38 To date, as far as I know, no one
has yet had the courage to address this central conundrum. B’s usual re-
sponse at such a juncture is simply to invoke common sense, one of his
unwavering allies throughout the book: i.e., such and such is simply im-
possible because common sense tells us so. (We could efficiently employ
minds such as this in science; it would bypass a great deal of expensive re-
search.) This paradox, especially via the OD data, is what prompted me to
think that we were dealing with two different brains, a point that appar-
ently made joke of the day for B.39 (For me, though, the likely fact that
someone had substituted a brain in this case did not seem humorous at
all.) I would furthermore emphasize, most strongly and contrary to B’s
claim, that it was not Horne’s two-brain hypothesis that sent me down this
path, but rather the evidence in the skull X-rays, evidence that I had
measured long before Horne’s proposal (which I accept).
2. The constraints of cross sectional anatomy on a CT scan still seem insur-
mountable for the trajectory of the magic bullet through JFK. This paradox
is included in Fetzer’s 16 points and has been extensively discussed else-
where.
3. The pathologists’ bizarre misplacement of the trajectory trail (they claimed
it extended from the occipital protuberance to the supra-orbital area, but
it’s actually about 10 cm more superior) in their autopsy protocol cannot be
explained by B, no matter where he points his finger or what emotional or
psychological arguments he uses. The pathologists had their moment with
the ARRB to resolve this—and they could not. At the autopsy, in order to
avoid two separate head shots, they had no choice but to ignore the obvi-
ous, much higher trail on the skull X-rays—in the face of a lower, occipital
entry that their fingers and eyes confirmed (and which I accept). While they
stared at the X-rays that night, they surely recognized the evidence for two
bullets (to the head). Even my son, at age 10, would not have missed this
obvious conclusion.40 But, of course, they had not really misunderstood
38 Robert Livingston, MD, now deceased but formerly a very good friend, had also agreed
with this conclusion that the photographs cannot be those of JFK’s brain. His profes-
sional credentials are impeccable.
39 If B has trouble imagining two brains, one can scarcely imagine his response to mod-
ern proposals of multiple universes, surely a vastly more challenging notion.

40 I know this because I actually tested him on this question at that age.

this basic evidence—instead they intentionally misstated it. They had been
thoroughly boxed in.41
4. The WC bullet that traversed the skull is another impossible conundrum.
According to the WC (and to B) this same bullet left part of itself on the
skull surface near the cowlick area. According to the 6.5 mm object on the
frontal X-ray, this had to be a nearly complete cross section from inside the
bullet (not from the tip or base—which both were found inside the limou-
sine). Even the HSCA ballistics expert, Sturdivan, insists that, based on his
tens of thousands of cases, this cannot be a piece of authentic metal from a
bullet. To make matters worse, one large fragment had its metal jacket bent
way back. Without striking an object like concrete (e.g., the street) or other
metal this is almost unimaginable.
5. No matter how many words, paragraphs, or excuses he employs, B cannot
erase the radical disagreement between the eyewitnesses and the photo-
graphs of the back of the head. This issue has been extensively reviewed
elsewhere, including photographs.42 To a physician these are overwhelm-
ingly powerful.
6. CE–843. These are two small lead fragments still located at the National Ar-
chives. I have personally observed them. They purportedly came from the
right supraorbital area, where the pathologists removed some metal frag-
ments. The larger of these two is easy to see on any print of the lateral or
AP skull X-rays (it’s about 7 x 2 x 2 mm). In fact, this latter fragment is no-
where near the shape (and probably not the size either) of the supposedly
identical fragment now in the Archives. That one is about 2 x 3 x 2 mm
(tiny) and shaped like a poppy flower with a large V-shaped notch taken out
of the top (wider) end. No interval testing should so have morphed its ap-
pearance.43 No WC supporter has ever successfully explained this anomaly.
41 I am actually quite sympathetic to the enormous psychological pressures that were
placed on the pathologists that weekend. See my previous discussions of this issue in
MIDP, pp. 283–290, and in the Foreword to In the Eye of History by William Law. To best
appreciate the dynamics at play, it is essential to understand the work of Stanley Mil-
gram, as I have emphasized before. It is striking that a 2007 book (Spy Wars by Ten-
nent Bagley. p. 275) also invokes Milgram’s work to explain similar pressures that had
been placed on some CIA officials during this same era. He even quotes one CIA officer,
who had radically changed his opinion, based on shifting political winds: “… we work-
ing-level types have to work within the general framework set by the chiefs.”
42 MIDP, p. 174 and The Killing of a President by Robert Groden (1994), pp. 86–87.
43 John Hunt has summarized sample-size requirements as follows (private communica-
tion): “According to Heiberger [of the FBI], the optimal mass of the spectroscopy sample
was a milligram or less. Heiberger explained that ‘it would be about the size of a period
at the end of a sentence.’ So small was the preferred sample size, according to Heiber-
ger, Gallagher, and Corbie, that it was necessary to remove and prepare it under a 20X
microscope. Heiberger also stated that they would be judicious with the blade when the
samples were meager. ‘No more of a sample than was necessary would be removed,’ re-
called Heiberger.” Hunt discovered that only 2 mg was actually taken for spectroscopy.
(The original mass of the larger fragment was 106.92 mg.) Regarding neutron activation
analysis, Hunt learned that the FBI took a total of 35.72 mg—for several measure-

7. At the Archives, multiple bullet fragments are clearly visible on the left side
of the skull X-rays. One of these is large enough to be seen easily on extant
prints of the X-rays. No WC supporter has ever explained these trouble-
some deviants.
8. The 6.5 mm fragment.44 By eight separate and consistent lines of evidence,
the optical density data show that this object was later added to the AP
skull X-ray. This was a simple feat in that era. Furthermore, it could be per-
formed, at a leisurely pace, in the secrecy of the darkroom. B’s only real re-
sponse to this proposal is to ask why a real piece of metal was not used in-
stead. Either he still does not understand how the darkroom work was
done, or he is here imagining some confederate in the autopsy room, at a
moment’s notice, running out to find a thin cross section of a 6.5 mm bul-
let, then running back and sticking it on the back of the skull—at precisely
the right spot, all the while no one in the autopsy room noticed. B’s only
other response is to quote (only in footnotes)45 correspondence from two
other individuals, neither of whom have ever explained the uncanny spatial
correlation between the object seen near the cowlick (on the lateral) and the
6.5 mm object (on the AP). So, in the end, B is left almost empty-handed,
with only some baseless speculations and some semantic confusion be-
tween “artifact” and “artificial”. Here again, of course, is the lawyer at work:
merely quote an “expert”, but don’t offer an original idea of your own.46
9. A pair of large format (4 x 5 inch) color transparencies (from the autopsy)47
of the back are inconsistent. Just superior to the fourth knuckle one of
them shows a dark area (probably a blood spot), just where the other mem-
ber of the pair shows a white spot. Although these observations individually
mean nothing, the mere fact that they are different from one another means
everything! At least one of them cannot be an original—despite what B
ments. That should have left 69.2 mg, but (after all of this) Guinn only got 41.9 mg. The
illogically small mass that Guinn got is consistent with the visual discrepancy that I
noted at the National Archives (and have reported here).
44 Regarding the grid lines on this 6.5 mm object, they are difficult to see on the right-
most side, but easily visible on the leftmost side (that’s JFK’s left). I looked for them on
many occasions—with extremely myopic eyes, eyes corrected to 20/20 with eyeglasses,
a loupe, a low power microscope, and even a high power microscope. And I measured
dozens, if not hundreds of data points, spaced 0.1 mm apart inside this object. What
more could be asked of anyone? Who else has done even a fraction of this?
45 Endnotes, pp. 221-222 (footnote). The comments are by Chad Zimmerman and Larry
Sturdivan.
46 Endnotes, p. 222. In fact, B did have one thought: he wondered why these culprits
did not bring this alteration to the attention of the FBI or to the WC in 1964! This idea
is so breathtaking that one can only imagine that B has here gone briefly mad. Regard-
ing the radiologist, John Ebersole, who probably performed this clever job, I have al-
ready noted that the instant I mentioned this 6.5 mm object to him, he forever stopped
talking about the autopsy—to anyone (MIDP, p. 439). This tape is in the National Ar-
chives, so B does not need to take my word for this.
47 The original color images were via these large format color transparencies. Any color
prints derive from these. The photographs were taken in pairs; this permits stereoscopic
viewing. This can be done with either a pair of transparencies or with a pair of prints.

claims, or what the National Archives claims or what the HSCA concluded.
Given a chance, anyone could see this with their own eyes. In fact, no one
has even noticed this before! Furthermore, one of the color prints (suppos-
edly descended from the originals) has no parent in the color transparency
set! It is an orphan—so how did it get into the set? Despite B’s persistent
claims that everything is kosher with these autopsy photographs and X-
rays,48 that cannot be true. Something is indeed wrong, very wrong, with
the autopsy photographs. Let me spell this out: if B had really wanted to
address these autopsy issues he should have gone to the Archives himself.
What good is second-hand information when first hand-information is ac-
cessible?
10. Stereoscopic viewing of the back of the head is definitely not all kosher ei-
ther, despite B’s second-hand claims.49 There is something very wrong with
the back of the head photographs—and it’s precisely where the disagree-
ment between the witnesses and the photographs is at its worst. The shiny
part of the hair that looks so freshly washed (it wasn’t according to the au-
topsy witnesses) is exactly where the image is two dimensional with stereo
viewing. Of course, that’s exactly what one should expect if a soft matte in-
sert had been used here to cover the posterior hole that virtually everyone
saw, both at Parkland and at Bethesda. I tried looking at this area every
which way—switching photos left to right, rotating them, and even looking
at pairs of color prints and then pairs of color transparencies and then
pairs in black and white. It was always the same—a flat, two-dimensional
image inevitably appeared, just where one would expect image alteration.
Also quite strikingly, this effect was not seen for any other views of the hair.
Although B claims that the HSCA observers established with “… absolute
and irrefutable certainty that the autopsy photographs have not been al-
tered …”50 via stereo viewing, it’s just no good relying on others for such
things. That is not the way of science. B really should have looked at this
himself.
11. Since he is so highly credentialed and famous (think O. J. Simpson and fo-
rensic shows on TV), B likes to cite Dr. Michael Baden, who is indeed a
wonderful specialist (and I liked his TV shows). Unfortunately, however, he
was quite wrong about the missing bone at the skull vertex, especially ante-
rior to the coronal suture. That missing frontal bone is quite obvious on the
X-rays (and even on Boswell’s sketches); even Dr. J. Lawrence Angel, the
physical anthropologist, disagreed with Baden’s reconstruction. My point
48 Endnotes, p. 221. B cites radiologist Gerald McDonnell as concluding that the X-rays
had not been altered in any way (7 HSCA 41, 220). Unfortunately, McDonnell does not
cite any measurements to support his conclusion, nor does he even indicate whether he
actually used an optical densitometer. In fact, doing such measurements is something
that would not ordinarily occur to a radiologist. A much more likely candidate for such
a thought is a medical physicist—which McDonnell was not. It is most unfortunate that
he had died only several months before I began my own research, as I discovered when I
tried to contact him.
49 Endnotes, p. 223.
50 Endnotes, p. 223.

here though goes well beyond that. With John Hunt’s recent, remarkable
discovery of the X-ray image of the Harper fragment (in the National Ar-
chives) we now know that there was metal at one small site on this bone.
The photographs show that this metal was not on the inside, but rather on
the outside. If only one headshot is accepted, then that metal debris on the
Harper fragment (remember—it’s on the outside) must necessarily derive
from the entry that the pathologists identified. Once that is granted, then
the Harper fragment itself becomes the missing bone at the rear (or, more
likely, just a part of the entire defect), just where the HSCA denied that
there was a hole.51 You can see all of this in my reconstructed skull.52
12. B claims that the ARRB found no smoking guns. That is surely open to de-
bate, much of which I leave to other critics. For my part, Humes and Bos-
well were caught with smoking guns in their holsters. On a related matter,
though, my independent discovery of the large T-shaped inscription on the
extant, left lateral skull X-ray occurred after the ARRB had expired. (See
the image in my on-line Pittsburg lecture.) The fact that the emulsion is in-
tact over this inscription, when it clearly should be visibly absent, is imme-
diate proof that this X-ray must be a copy, rather than an original. I found
this observation so direct and so revolutionary that I described it, some-
what tongue-in-cheek for my Jewish friends, as a burning bush rather than
a smoking gun. This X-ray also has two other odd features: (a) there are no
Kodak identification numbers anywhere on it, and (b) it is not available to
the public. So the question that all of those true believers should pose to
me this is: Can Mantik distinguish a duplicate X-ray from an original, in
particular when a large area of emulsion (that T-shaped area) has obviously
been scraped off the original (but not the copy)? If I can’t, then they should
cross this item off my list. However, I am very certain that I can—and no
one has suggested that I am so inept that I cannot distinguish an original
(with missing emulsion) from a copy (with no missing emulsion). This is the
worst possible news for WC supporters. It means that the original has gone
missing. More importantly, though, it means that the extant X-ray (the one
now in the Archives)—because it is a copy—could have been altered in any
number of ways in the darkroom. I have amply demonstrated this possibil-
ity with my birdbrain X-rays, skulls with bullet debris added, and one even
showing a scissors inside the skull.53 But, for this simple observation (of in-
tact emulsion), my skills are not even required. Anyone with proper vision
could see for themselves54 that the emulsion (over the T-shaped inscription)
51 Even the sole radiologist at the autopsy, John Ebersole, told the HSCA that he re-
called such a large hole at the back of the head. He also agreed with the pathologists
that the bullet entry was low, near the occipital protuberance—so B has no choice but
to say that all five professionals were wrong in their placement of this entry site (John
Stringer, the photographer, also agreed). When I spoke to Ebersole he was practicing in
my own specialty of radiation oncology, the one specialty in which knowledge of anat-
omy does matter.
52 MIDP, p. 227, Figure 2C.
53 MIDP, p. 432.
54 With the blessing of Steven Pinker I have here avoided the awkward English con-
struction of “himself or herself”, in favor of “themselves”. This will recur below.

is not missing (as it must be for an original) from the left lateral skull X-ray
in the Archives.
Now B’s response to all of this might well be that these issues were addressed
and resolved by prior experts, which is, of course, nowhere near the truth. Or,
perhaps more likely, he would say: I already know from the Oswald evidence
that he was as guilty as sin, so I don’t really need to address all of these issues.
In fact, he employs that very argument in various guises quite often.55 I was a
bit stunned by this type of logic. Outside of the fields of logic, mathematics and
science, I really don’t think I had seen it before—certainly not for evaluating fo-
rensic evidence. Are only trial lawyers capable of such magical feats? What if
Henri Becquerel had reacted similarly to the first hint of radioactivity in his
photographic film wrapped around uranium salts? What if he had said that a
lifetime of experience had proven to him that such things were impossible?
Numerous, similar stories of unexpected observations have routinely been re-
counted in the history of science. It is the exceptional fact, the misfit, that ulti-
mately brings the fresh insight, not the routine, humdrum one. That was one
reason why I was at some pains to quote Butterfield about the Scotland Yard
detective who noted all the obvious clues, but still drew the wrong conclu-
sions.56 In a very deep sense, B really does not want to look at all the pertinent
data—after all, he already knows the answer, so why bother? It’s really just too
much trouble. This again characterizes the legal mind, but not the scientific
mind. And, more troublesome for him, it totally violates his own best descrip-
tion of his own book—a book that attempts “… to be a comprehensive and fair
evaluation of the entire [sic] case ….”
So, Where Are We?
So where, in the end, are we after this massive tome? First, I think it is very
good to have it as a resource. But it absolutely must be counterbalanced by at
least a few open minds. Sometimes common sense does not carry the day.
Sometimes even bizarre data are real.57 Sometimes even government employees
under unique pressures do things they never would otherwise do (e.g., missing
original X-rays and altered X-rays).58 Not all cases follow the textbook. As a
cancer specialist with many decades of experience, that is the main thing that
still keeps me interested. So let’s keep this discussion wide open. Let’s not just
talk about looking at the evidence. And let’s not rule out evidence simply be-
55 pp. 463–4. His logic is circular, though B won’t admit it. Another good example of
this, regarding the forged 6.5 mm object, is the footnote on p. 953.
56 MIDP, p. 395.
57 With his unwavering commitment to common sense, I wonder how B would have sur-
vived in the fields of quantum mechanics or chaos theory.

58 From Freedom to Slavery by Gerry Spence (1995), p. 27: “I found the minions of the
law—the agents of the FBI—to be men who proved themselves not only to be fully capa-
ble, but also utterly willing to manufacture evidence, to conceal crucial evidence and
even to change the rules that governed life and death if, in the prosecution of the ac-
cused, it seemed expedient to do so.” Gerry Spence, in his encounters with the FBI, also
discovered yet another magic bullet.

cause it violates past experience. In the future, unlike B, let’s actually examine
all of the evidence, but especially those items that are central—and even the
evidence we weren’t quite expecting.
After B describes his amusement at the outright silliness (in his opinion) of the
two-brain proposal, he tells us how he really feels:
How, then, can Mantik and thousands like him in the conspiracy community—
many of lesser intellect—end up uttering absurdities like this, as well as count-
less others throughout the years?59
But the number of well-known persons who have conceded a conspiracy, di-
rectly or indirectly, is quite remarkable. Does B truly believe that all of the fol-
lowing individuals have simply “… utter[ed] absurdities … throughout the
years”?
MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA: Addendum 5.60
Believers in a JFK Assassination Conspiracy
Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States69

Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States70
John B. Connally, Governor of Texas71
J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI
Clyde Tolson, Associate Director of the FBI72
Cartha DeLoach, Assistant Director of the FBI
William Sullivan, FBI Domestic Intelligence Chief
John McCone, Director of the CIA
David Atlee Phillips, CIA disinformation specialist (Chief of Covert Actions, Mex-
ico City, 1963)
Stanley Watson, CIA, Chief of Station
The Kennedy family73
Admiral (Dr.) George Burkley, White House physician
James J. Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service74
Robert Knudsen, White House photographer (who saw autopsy photos)
Jesse Curry, Chief of Police,75 Dallas Police Department
Roy Kellerman (heard JFK speak after supposed magic bullet)
William Greer (the driver of the Lincoln limousine)
Abraham Bolden, Secret Service, White House detail and Chicago office
John Norris, Secret Service (worked for LBJ; researched case for decades)
59 B is also incensed at Evan Thomas and Michael Beschloss, not because they neces-
sarily believe in conspiracy, but because they both believe that the WC engaged in a
cover-up. (In fact, B often seems upset that anyone would ever disagree with him about
a variety of different items.)
60 MIDP, pp. 404–405. Footnotes 69–76 appear in the original appendix of MIDP.

Evelyn Lincoln, JFK’s secretary

Abraham Zapruder, most famous home movie photographer in history
James Tague, struck by a bullet fragment in Dealey Plaza
Hugh Huggins, CIA operative, conducted private investigation for RFK
Sen. Richard Russell, member of the Warren Commission
John J. McCloy, member of the Warren Commission
Bertrand Russell, British mathematician and philosopher
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University
Michael Foot, British MP
Senator Richard Schweiker, assassinations subcommittee (Church Committee)
Tip O’Neill, Speaker of the House (he assumed JFK’s congressional seat)
Rep. Henry Gonzalez (introduced bill to establish HSCA)
Rep. Don Edwards, chaired HSCA hearings (former FBI agent)
Frank Ragano, attorney for Trafficante, Marcello, Hoffa
Marty Underwood, advance man for Dallas trip
Riders in follow-up car: JFK aides Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers
Sam Kinney, Secret Service driver of follow-up car
Paul Landis, passenger in Secret Service follow-up car
John Marshall, Secret Service
John Norris, Secret Service
H. L. Hunt, right-wing oil baron
John Curington, H.L. Hunt’s top aide
Bill Alexander, Assistant Dallas District Attorney
Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel for the HSCA
Robert Tanenbaum, Chief Counsel for the HSCA
Richard A. Sprague, Chief Counsel for the HSCA
Gary Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel for the HSCA
Parkland doctors: McClelland, Crenshaw, Stewart, Seldin, Goldstrich, Zedlitz,
Jones, Akin, et al.
Bethesda witnesses: virtually all of the paramedical personnel
All of the jurors in Garrison’s trial of Clay Shaw76
Bobby Hargis, Dealey Plaza motorcycle man
Mary Woodward, Dallas Morning News (and eyewitness in Dealey Plaza)
Maurice G. Marineau, Secret Service, Chicago office
Most of the American public
Most of the world’s Citizens

In Closing61
B clearly wants to destroy every last scintilla of anti-WC evidence. But even he
admits that virtually no murder case is ever that clean cut. It is therefore more
than a little bewildering that he does not give ground a little here and there—
but he simply won’t. That makes him all the less credible. And it certainly does
not give him the air of a scientist. But he does not seem to care. He would pre-
fer to appear omniscient.
There is not even a pretense of open-mindedness. His scorn, perhaps even ha-
tred, for the critics comes through page after page. Again, the reader must de-
cide if he can accept such a relentless bias.
Although he describes our books (edited by Fetzer) as the only exclusively scien-
tific books on the case, he mostly avoids the issues raised therein. The 6.5 mm
object does get some, rather strange, discussion, but that’s about all. It’s quite
fantastic that he would throw such an encomium at us and then leave us
largely alone. On the contrary, he should have focused on many of our para-
doxes, to the exclusion of JFK’s tailors or Oswald’s motives, for example.
He admits that his book is mainly reinterpretation and reanalysis, as opposed

to new evidence. In other words, this is a book absolutely packed with second-
hand information. The reader must judge for himself whether that is good
enough. That surely befits his role as a trial attorney, but a scientist would not
be at all happy with that. For my part, I think it is a great loss for all of us that
he did not at least visit the National Archives. He need not even have gone
alone. In recent years, at least two individuals,62 whom he cites favorably, have
been there. Why didn’t he tag along?
Despite its occasional references to science, this book is rarely a scientific dis-
cussion of the evidence—not even the medical evidence. In fact, this case is so
wide and so deep, as B acknowledges, that he really cannot do justice to his
opponents on a myriad of issues. The honest researcher absolutely must not
take his word on most of these controversies—such an individual has no choice
but to read the works of B’s opponents. What is valuable about the book,
though, is that these references are usually indicated. For that reason alone it
will be with us for a very long time.
61 This entire debate will surely continue long after B’s book and this paper. The inter-
ested reader might also visit the other articles in Assassination Research. B’s work
would not qualify for publication in this journal. A recent refutation of the single bullet
theory is Fetzer’s “Reasoning about Assassinations: Critical Thinking in Political Con-
texts,” International Journal of the Humanities, 3 (2005/2006). This was first presented
at a conference at Cambridge University in 2005.
62 Chad Zimmerman and Larry Sturdivan.

Appendix A: A Small Potpourri of Other Comments and Criticisms
1. B persistently lumps all critics into grassy knoll trumpeters. I am not one—
the medical evidence does not go that way. But B is a lumper, not a splitter,
so there I sit in his classification scheme.
2. B63 claims that nearly all critics believe the pathologists were incompetent. I
do not. I have previously written that Humes was in charge of the weekly
brain cutting conferences at Bethesda. There are many other reasons for
believing that he was not merely competent, but probably above average.
3. B claims that critics are stuck with the position that the back bullet (if it
did not traverse JFK) vanished into thin air. Nowhere does he acknowledge
my proposal that the back wound could merely have been caused by a
piece of shrapnel. There is, in fact, an enormous amount of evidence for lots
of shrapnel in this case, even visible on the X-rays themselves.
4. He also claims that the throat bullet had to disappear miraculously if the
critics are right (that it came from the front). Unfortunately again, perhaps
intentionally, he does not mention my alternate proposal that a bullet trav-
ersed the windshield, but missed everyone. A fair number of witnesses de-
scribe such an event (both the stray bullet and the windshield evidence). So
the throat wound might well have been caused by a small splinter of glass,
which would actually fit with the wound seen at the top of the right lung (it
was localized).
5. B claims that critics routinely place Connally directly in front of JFK in or-
der to destroy the single bullet theory. That is not the case for me. I have
performed very detailed reconstructions (via Z-frames and corollary data)
with Connally properly placed, but still cannot prove the single bullet the-
ory. As he often does, B likes to simplify things.
6. B notes that all the evidence points toward debris flying forward after the
head shot(s). But he ignores the contrary reports of the motorcycle men to
the rear and the members of the Secret Service in the follow-up car. Is he
truly unaware of their reports?
7. He places great emphasis on the invisible hole at the back of JFK’s head—
in those Z frames immediately after the headshot. By doing so, he totally
ignores my discussion of a bone fragment like a trap door at the posterior.
This is based on the actual X-rays, but also on the comments of Dr. Robert
McClelland. Furthermore, Z-374 does suggest the large hole at the rear.64
8. The large white patches on both lateral X-rays should at least be mentioned
in passing. So far as I know these alterations have not been seriously chal-
lenged and even Humes was confused by them in his deposition. These ar-
eas, posterior to the ear, show bone virtually as dense as JFK’s petrous
63p. 426 note.

64The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), pp. 25 and 39. Especially see the close-up pho-
tograph at the top of p. 39.

bone, the densest in the body. His pre-mortem lateral does not look any-
thing like this.
9. B (more than once) implies that critics believe that the CIA hired Oswald to
kill JFK. Surely B’s thinking has become a bit muddled here. Oswald him-
self stated that he was a patsy. I strongly suspect that most critics would
leave it at that—and not, in any way, support B’s depiction of the CIA-
Oswald connection.
10. B incessantly beats the drum for the WC’s honesty and open-mindedness.
Although B cites65 Warren’s autobiography, he carefully avoids his eulogy
for JFK, while the body lay in the capitol rotunda. On that Sunday, Warren
made it transparently clear (at this incredibly early date) that he knew that
“… some misguided wretch [singular noun] …” had done this deed.66 He
also used the phrase, “an assassin”. That he recounts this in his autobiog-
raphy shows that he had not the least embarrassment about having said
this, even in retrospect.
11. B wonders what the purpose of substituting and removing autopsy photo-
graphs from the collection could possibly be? One can only think he is be-
ing disingenuous here. What reason could there be other than to remove
evidence of conspiracy, e.g., a large hole at the back of the head?
12. In his Introduction, regarding the life of Jesus, B impulsively says, “Indeed,
no one has come up with anything new for two thousand years.”67 Many,
perhaps most, New Testament scholars would leap off their chairs at this
eccentric comment. For more information on this subject, see the blog for
my opening quote. B seems off-handedly to dismiss all manner of fascinat-
ing items: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi documents (discovered
by Mohammed Ali), the ossuaries of James (still debated) and Peter (not
much debated) and Caiafas (not debated), Peter’s house (possibly correct),
the Galilean boat, the inscription for Pontius Pilate, the Gospel of Judas
Iscariot, the tomb of Herod the Great, the recent resurgence of scholarly lit-
erature on Mary Magdalene, and the very recent, hotly-debated Talpiot
Tomb.68
Appendix B: Modern Physics and James Joyce
(This is purely for readers who want to close the gap between the two cultures.)
1. Overstreet, David. 1980. Oxymoronic language and logic in quantum me-

chanics and James Joyce. Substance (University of Wisconsin Press) 28 37–
59.
65 p. 426.
66 The Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren by Earl Warren (1977), p. 353.
67 p. xli.
68 Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts (2002) by John Dominic
Crossan and Jonathon L. Reed.

2. Porter, Jeffrey. 1990. “Three quarks69 for Muster Mark”: Quantum word-
play and nuclear discourse in Russell Hogan’s Riddley Walker. Contempo-
rary Literature 21 448–469.
3. Booker, M. Keith. 1990. Joyce, Planck, Einstein, and Heisenberg: A relativ-
istic quantum mechanical discussion of Ulysses. James Joyce Quarterly 27
577–586.
Acknowledgments
My wife, Patricia L. James, M.D., and my son, Christopher (age 21), offered use-
ful insights, which I have incorporated. The latter (at age 15), immediately after
my observation of the T-shaped inscription, was able to complete the argument
for me (as outlined above) before I could even finish it. James Fetzer, Ph.D., of-
fered wise advice on structuring this essay. I am grateful to Jones Harris, who
alerted me to Spy Wars. John Hunt kindly loaned his data tables on the lead
fragments used for spectroscopic and neutron activation analysis, while Gary
Aguilar, M.D., has persistently attended to numerous critical details and
thereby made this review a more robust summary of the relevant evidence.
69 This quote is the origin of the currently used term in physics for the component par-
ticles of the proton, neutron and other baryons.

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BOOK REVIEWS / Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History

Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi:

David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.

It is surely interesting how intelligent people can differ

——“Doggedness and the Talpiot Tomb,” James Tabor, 22 May 20071

Bugliosi (simply designated as “B” hereafter) graduated from of the University of

1 The Jesus Dynasty Blog.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

my paper, which was presented at the 2003 Pittsburgh Symposium.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

An Immediate Disaster for B

everyone now knows, totally contrary to B’s repeated expostulations,

Oswald’s Guilt?” or see the web site: www.reclaiminghistory.org.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

How Can the Truth Be Known?

Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” The original

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

A Few Kind Words for B

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

And Some That Aren’t So Kind

It seems to me that engaging in immediate debate on each specific point closes

B’s approach reminded me of a bulldozer in a garbage pile. Never mind any-

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

Some Misgivings about B’s Thinking

Is This Book Scientific?

If one is looking for a scientific treatise on the JFK assassination, Reclaiming

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

He also seems not to understand the nature of scientific argument or proof. A

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

What About That 60-Second Proof?

Shakespeare (revised) on Lawyers

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

At Last, to the Evidence

B’s chief claim for his book appears to be this quote:

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

… although there have been hundreds of books on the assassination, no book

Central Paradoxes Studiously (and Wisely) Evaded by B

“I will not knowingly omit or distort anything.”37

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

matter can be addressed at a layman’s level, via the obvious blackness at

ern proposals of multiple universes, surely a vastly more challenging notion.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

41 I am actually quite sympathetic to the enormous psychological pressures that were

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

struction of “himself or herself”, in favor of “themselves”. This will recur below.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

So, Where Are We?

vived in the fields of quantum mechanics or chaos theory.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA: Addendum 5.60

Believers in a JFK Assassination Conspiracy

Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States69

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

Evelyn Lincoln, JFK’s secretary

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

He admits that his book is mainly reinterpretation and reanalysis, as opposed

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik

Appendix A: A Small Potpourri of Other Comments and Criticisms

63p. 426 note.

ASSASSINATION RESEARCH / Vol. 5 No. 1 © Copyright 2007 David W. Mantik